marmite

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1)  A rounded cooking pot of various designs, commonly pot-bellied, with or without tripod, handles, lid etc; originally earthenware but currently more commonly of cast iron or other metals.
 * 2) * 1824 Thomas Gill. The Technical Repository p. 180: XXXV: On the French Marmite, or Pot-au-Feu: and on preparing Bouillon with it
 * My little boy having been ill of a fever for forty days, I have learned from his attendant how to make the celebrated soup (bouillon) of Paris: and finding it to be superior to any that I ever before tasted, I take the liberty to send you the directions necessary to enable any one to prepare this cheap and desirable food.Earthen-pots with covers, made to hold from one to seven pounds of meat, are found in every family. The marmite bought for me was for one-and-a-half pound only: this quantity of lean meat (bœufmaigre), was always part of the leg or shoulder: it was put into the marmite, which was then filled up with cold water, about five pints, and placed on the hearth, close to the wood-fire; and when it began to simmer or boil gently, it threw up a scum, which was carefully taken off from time to time with a spoon, for the space of threequarters of an hour, which perfectly cleansed the meat and water from every impurity.

Etymology
In Middle French (attested 1388) used in the sense of an earthen or metal cooking-pot; later (17th century) also of bombs or grenades from their resemblance to iron cooking-pots. Earlier, the noun meant "hypocrite"  (attested 1223); the semantic development is explained as the cooking-pot being covered and not revealing its interior (thus being "hypocritical", as compared to e.g. a cooking-pan or a plate).

The etymology of marmite "hypocrite" is explained as a compound of   (from an  base mar- "murmur") and   (an obsolete word for "cat", probably also onomatopoeic, i.e. imitative of meowing, extant only in the compound ), and thus describing a person being evasive by "murmuring" or "meowing" instead of speaking plainly.

Noun

 * 1) pot, cooking pot,
 * 2)  meal prepared in a cooking pot
 * 3)  (heavy) shell
 * 4)   prostitute, especially one past the first youth, the "flesh pot" of the souteneur